Davey Bauer’s lungs needed to go.
A double lung transplant was the only remedy for the 34-year-old, who spent years vaping, caught influenza and ended up in the hospital. But before his body could withstand the procedure, he needed time to recover without his infection-ravaged lungs.
Doctors at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago fashioned a temporary lung to keep him alive, but there was another conundrum, his surgeon said: Both lungs needed to go, not just one. Without at least one of those large spongy organs, how do surgeons prevent a patient’s heart from collapsing in on itself? Breast implants. DD-breast implants, to be exact, said Dr. Ankit Bharat.
“One of the many functions of the lungs is to keep the heart in its place,” Bharat told The Washington Post. “We needed to come up with a strategy. So we ended up, you know, just using breast implants. They were the biggest implants that we have that can be put inside a person.”
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This was the first time Northwestern Medicine doctors used an artificial lung and breast implants to support a double-lung transplant. The creative strategy saved Bauer’s life. But the peculiar solution was also uniquely suited to Bauer’s case — and perfectly sized chest cavity. It may not become a widespread standard, but it offers a viable option for difficult cases, according to Bharat.
“What this milestone has helped us understand is that there is a potential strategy to get patients who need a lung transplant, but are too sick to undergo that procedure, because of the severity of their lung damage,” Bharat said.
Bauer — who loves to snowboard, skateboard and worked in landscaping near St. Louis — began smoking cigarettes when he was 21. He said he switched to vaping in 2014, thinking it was a better alternative.
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Health officials largely disagree and have sounded the alarm on e-cigarettes for years now. Many have raised concerns about the murky, long-term impacts that the popular cigarette-alternative may have on otherwise healthy young people like Bauer.
Bharat said, in his own medical opinion, Bauer’s history of vaping likely led to his serious condition.
Bauer caught the flu in April. He struggled to move and couldn’t breathe well. On April 16, his girlfriend, Susan Gore, rushed him to the emergency room. That’s the last he remembers, until he woke up with a new set of lungs two months later, Bauer said.
“It was definitely overwhelming at first, because I had Susan and my whole family around me, and just realizing everything that happened was kind of a slow process,” Bauer said. But knowing he survived is “pretty cool,” he added. “Like, I’m still alive and just waking up and hearing that story was pretty miraculous.”
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Bauer was initially admitted to a hospital in St. Louis, where he was placed in a medical coma and hooked up to a device that mimics the work of the heart and the lungs, pumping and oxygenating blood. But Bauer’s condition continued to worsen, and it was clear that a double-lung transplant was his only option to survive.
Bauer was transported to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where Bharat’s team brainstormed the strategy to remove their patient’s infected lungs, engineer an artificial lung and place the DD-breast implants inside Bauer’s chest cavity to prevent his heart from collapsing.
Within a day, Bauer’s body started clearing the infection and he was listed for a double-lung transplant, Bharat said. The team received an offer of new lungs on May 27, and the next day, the breast implants were taken out and the donor lungs were put in. Bauer spent several months recovering in the intensive care unit, and was discharged in late September.
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He remains in Chicago for rehabilitation therapy under his medical team’s watchful eyes, but Bauer and Gore look forward to returning to their life in Missouri, they said.
For Susan, who witnessed the months-long ordeal, Bauer’s recovery is nothing short of a miracle.
“I would start crying whenever I saw his toes wiggle,” she said, reflecting on how far Bauer has come from being wheelchair bound “to walking without a walker.”
Bauer plans to never vape again, and can’t wait to return to snowboarding.
“I’m feeling a lot like I was before all this. I’m still trying to build back some strength but other than that I’m all here and thankful to be here,” he said.
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